Vast and Varied: Texas Women Painters II: San Antonio

Ruiz-Healy Art presents Vast and Varied: Texan Women Painters II, a group exhibition of works by Santa Barraza, Jennifer Agricola Mojica, Eva Marengo Sánchez, Audrey Rodríguez, Marta Sánchez, Ethel Shipton, and Bettie Ward. The exhibition will be on view at our San Antonio gallery from September 24 to November 1, 2025, with an opening reception on September 24 from 6:00 to 8:00 PM. Vast and Varied: Texan Women Painters II tackles the Texas cultural milieu through themes of cross-cultural identity, motherhood, mementos, and domesticity. 

The painting Aunque la mona se vista de seda, mona se queda depicts a popular Mexican candy with a San Antonionian coffee and health juice chain glass bottle. The Spanish saying "Aunque la mona se vista de seda, mona se queda" translates to English as "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear" or "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig". The phrase means that superficial changes in appearance cannot hide a person's or thing's true, innate nature.

Audrey Rodriguez’s observational still lifes, which are rooted in cross-cultural identity, primarily explore food, enabling her work to reflect intergenerational attitudes towards migration and the circulation of objects and goods across borders. Drawing inspiration from Dutch Golden Age and Spanish Baroque still life paintings, Rodriguez’s still lifes are highly technical and rooted in traditional observational oil painting practices.

“As I navigate my life and the lives of my two children, I find myself in a place of constant learning permeated with challenges. These uncomfortable but beautiful experiences punctuate my compositional space. Houses, birds, and figures are frequent motifs that straddle the line between realism and abstraction.” - Jennifer Agricola Mojica

In her Mujeres Nobles (Noble Women) series, pre-Columbian codices, portraiture, and landscape come together to create a representation of her ancestral history. Furthermore, the use of papel amate speaks to the deep roots of the fibrous tree and its resources, perpetuating the understanding of indigenousness as it pertains to the Indigenous populations in the Americas. Mujeres Nobles Series: Frida con Tezcatlipoca y Coyolxauhqui showcases the artist’s ability to synthesize and reinterpret historical figures, such as Frida Kahlo and the Aztec moon goddess Coyolxauhqui, both of whom experienced intense bodily pain.

Born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, Chicana artist Marta Sánchez often paints on aluminum, following in the tradition of Mexican retablos, wherein images and text work harmoniously as a direct way of storytelling. Collecting and documenting narrative, family histories, and migration serves as a way to celebrate heritage, as seen in her paintings El Jardin and Blanca Estela’s Paradise, which serves as a memorial for her grandmother, Blanca Estela.

Ethel Shipton, born and raised in Laredo, Texas, documents images from text, language, signs, and urban scenes seen on the street, repurposing them into screenprints and paintings. Shipton grew up in a border town during a time when traveling between the USA and Mexico was more open, allowing her to experience multiple cultures through frequent movement back and forth across the international bridge.

“My practice has been about looking at the things around us, maybe even the things that you don’t realize, are speaking to you.”- Ethel Shipton

“Each of my paintings represents snapshots into moments and recurring themes in my life that tell a larger story about geography and culture.” - Eva Marengo Sanchez

Sonya Renee Taylor, On Radical Self Love serves as an introspection for the artist: “I get to ‘mold’ my environment in a way that honors and allows me to hear my body’s wisdom.”  An acorn is depicted in a clay nicho, a type of folk art built in a shadow box style, wherein the box typically features a central figure or object for whose honor the nicho has been created. The phrase “an acorn doesn’t need to be told how to become an oak tree, it just needs the right environment” is painted along the edges of the panel, optimistically reflecting the idea that our potential for growth, confidence, and wisdom is already inside each of us. The phrase is also indicative of “Buddha-nature,” the innate potential for all beings to become a Buddha. Sonya Renee Taylor is an author whose work focuses on body liberation, racial justice, and transformational change using her framework of radical self-love.